Her recently published second memoir, Three More Words, chronicles what happened to the little girl in foster care who no one would listen to, and how she overcame the incredible odds stacked against her. Her determination to bring justice for the dozens of children who lived in the Mosses home has expanded to advocating for systemic changes that ensure the safety and well-being of more than 400,000 children in foster care throughout the United States. In fact, it sowed the seeds of advocacy that would bloom more with each passing year. The experience, however, did not silence her. Eventually, Ashley was removed from the home and “branded a trouble-maker for speaking up.”
As chronicled in her New York Times bestselling memoir Three Little Words, the Mosses appeared to be skilled at concealing the abuse. At the time, other children who lived there were afraid to verify Ashley’s complaints. “I also knew I had to come forward to bring additional credibility to the stories of abuse being shared by the children.”Īshley tried to warn caseworkers as early as 1993 about abusive conditions in the home. “I knew so many kids who had lived in that home,” recalled Ashley, who spent six months with the Mosses. Marjorie Moss was accused of punching and beating children, locking them outside for hours without water or food, holding children’s heads under water, and threatening them with guns. Hillsborough County deputies arrested the Mosses in May 2000 on 40 felony child abuse and neglect charges. Born to a single teen mom, Ashley went into Florida’s foster care system at age three and was shuffled through 44 caseworkers and 14 foster homes ̶ some horribly abusive ̶ before being adopted out of a group home at the age of 12.Įven though it happened 15 years ago, she clearly remembers seeing the mug shots of two of her former foster parents, Charles and Marjorie Moss, on the evening news.
The final straw for Ashley Rhodes-Courter was the “gag order” mandating that she not speak publicly about the gruesome murder of her former foster child, Jenica Randazzo.įor much of her 29 years of life, Ashley courageously spoke up when witnessing wrongs, a trait fine-tuned during the tumultuous nine years she spent in foster care herself.
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